Licences

The copyright notice, disclaimer notice, privacy policy and attribution notice of the AIMS Website also apply to the Data platform, Data Catalogue and the information holdings, including metadata records, text, maps, spatial layers and downloadable data objects.  

Metadata records include licence statements, and presented are under Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence unless otherwise stated. This means you may copy, share, redistribute, mix, transform and build upon the material as long as you provide appropriate credit (attribution) and link to the source page. Metadata records clearly display the Creative Commons licence or other licences are required by the data custodian, and include a citation which is able to copied.  

Publicly data files may be available for download under the licences described on the metadata records. In some cases, download links are provided through email registration, where an automated service generates the download and provides a file transfer link to the requested file. In these cases, you are required to enter your email address to receive the file. This enables us to generate download statistics and monitor resource use of the data tools. You may request your details to be removed at any time.  

Other tools providing access to data enable unique data downloads or API access are also made available under the creative commons licence noted above(CC-BY).  

While AIMS has made every reasonable effort to ensure high quality of the data, products and services, to the extent permitted by law the data, products and services are provided without any warranties of any kind. AIMS accepts no responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of the data. 

For access to restricted datasets, please contact adc@aims.gov.au to determine whether the data are suitable for your purposes. In some cases, data use will require a formal data sharing agreement. 

PUBLICLY AVAILABLE DATA 

AIMS's policy is to make scientific data publicly available as soon as practical following creation. To facilitate use and uptake, the international standardised Creative Commons by Attribution (CC-BY) licence agreement is used. This licence requires that data users give credit to AIMS. It allows data users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes. 

Further information regarding Creative Commons Licences can be found at: https://creativecommons.org/ 

Unless more restrictive licensing is noted, data directly accessed via the AIMS website or other online service will imply agreement with CC-BY licensing and citation arrangements. 

RESTRICTED DATA AND EMBARGO PERIODS 

Restrictions to data may apply under the following conditions: 

1. An embargo period of up to one (1) year from the time of data creation has been established by the Chief Research Officer or CEO. Such approval must be obtained at the time of project initiation and documented in the Project's Data Management Plan so the restriction on distribution can be appropriately applied to the metadata record. In cases in which data are subject to an embargo:
   • Designated AIMS staff, collaborators and other parties with agreed access shall have exclusive access to the data for the duration of the embargo period; and 
   • Extension of the embargo period of up to one (1) year can be granted by the Chief Research Officer or CEO 
2. The data form part of an ongoing long-term dataset. These data will be released one (1) year after collection. Data comprising long-term data sets will be released at least once annually.
3. Existing contractual obligations restrict access to the data.
   • If data are collected under a legal contract, the terms and conditions set out in the contract shall prevail in all instances, even when there are differences between this policy and the legal contract.

ACCESSING AIMS' SCIENTIFIC DATA 

As assets and records of AIMS, AIMS reserves the right to make any data available to AIMS' staff, students, external parties and/or the public as appropriate through consultation with the designated data custodian(s). 

Upon receiving a request to access AIMS' data, the Research Data Curator handle the request as per the Data Request Handling Procedure described in the Data Management Resources section on the intranet: 

In cases when a request comes from an external party, data custodian(s) should, in response to the request and whenever meaningful and practical, seek to develop collaborative arrangements with those parties to enhance the value of providing access to the data for the custodian(s) and AIMS. 

Users of AIMS' scientific data will at the very least be required to: 

1. Comply with copyright, moral rights, licence requirements and other terms and conditions associated with the specific data set being accessed; 
2. Acknowledge AIMS and the data custodian(s) in any subsequent use or publication of the data or data products; and 
3. Agree to, and comply with, AIMS Data Sharing Agreement if they are an external party to AIMS. Users of AIMS' publicly available data agree to, and comply with, the relevant Creative Commons Attribution licence.